[eCommerce Case Studies] How 4 BigCommerce stores use supercharging apps to sell over $45,000 in extra sales “You aren’t a technology company. You’re a retailer.’’ Tracey Walley, Chief Editor at BigCommerce wrote in her publication about top selling tips fastest growing BigCommerce brands are using. About that, she’s completely right. Technology has come such a long way to empower eCommerce brands with feature-rich online websites built from scratch within minutes. eCommerce softwares like BigCommerce turn shipping complexity, multi-channel integration, personalization, analytics, etc., into problem-free matters. Building the underlying technology is no longer your job. What’s left for you? Marketing strategies, conversion optimizing tactics, or so. But not really, since tips & tricks that work have already been proven by successful case studies, and backed by ready-made add-ons. How 4 BigCommerce successful stores earn over $45,000 in extra sales in short times, using supercharging apps to boost conversion rates? Those apps integrate nicely with BigCommerce and cost just $19 to $59 per month. The ROI is… simply incredible.
Cross-sell Complementary Items in Value Packages Muddy Outdoors, earned $46,700 extra sales from Boost Sales app Muddy Outdoors is quite well-known in their niche for selling high-end quality gear for outdoor hunters. They have many product lines including apparel, accessories, trail cameras, safety harnesses and more tools for professional hunters. Since many items at Muddy Outdoors are complementary, they decided to bundle up items into packages and sell as value combos. For example, those interested in their most popular camera model will be offered 2 more supporting equipment, total price is slightly discounted, as below:
Muddy Outdoors run a lot of cross-sell deals like this one and cover most popular items. Within 3 months from June to September 2017, they received nearly 200 orders worth $46,700 from these cross-sell orders only. Extra tips:  
Build cross-sell packages for products that get highest views in your shop. This will also lift up total views of the package offers since most customers are interested in the main products. For one same main product, build different cross-sell packages with different total price range. Customers have a budget, make sure they can find an option that suit theirs.
Incentivise Checkouts + Increase Order Value with Free Gifts Belle Fever, earned AUD154,300 extra sales with Checkout Boost app A proud, family-run company founded in 2012, Belle Fever is an Australian brand that specialises in creating personalised handcrafted, yet affordable jewellery. The strategy they seek after is using freebies as incentives for customers to buy more and complete the order. They show the offer at cart page to make sure customers who are pondering over their cart are encouraged to complete checkout.
With Checkout Boost app, Belle Fever has tested many free gift offers: customers will receive a free ring, necklace, or pair of earrings if they spend more than $85, $115, or $150. The purpose is to find out what free item or what price threshold appeal most to customers and can generate the highest conversion rate.
Their offers have very good conversion rates from 24% to 50%+. In 5 months from April to September 2017, Belle Fever saw a fantastic result from free-gift offers: $1400 successful orders worth in total AUD154,300. 67% of these orders could have been lost due to cart abandonment, if they hadn’t curated such a smart incentive strategy at cart page. Extra tips:
Add exit-intent technology to prevent abandoned carts: the free-gift offer only displays when customers are detected to leaving the site without making any purchase. Instead of offering free gifts, try discount coupon or freeshipping code. Test, test, test until you find out what type of incentives works best for your niche.
Add Extra Effects to Incentives Offers: Social Network Sharing and Countdown Timer Leaders RPM Shop, earned $65,000 extra sales from Checkout Boost app
Starting from a brick and mortal shop since the 1980s, Leaders RPM brand selling parts, accessories, apparel, and gear for marine, powersports and on-road vehicles opened their online store with BigCommerce in 2017. Unlike Belle Fever, Leaders RPM runs 3 different types of offers simultaneously, each for a different cart value range. For orders from $30 - $50, they offer a free shipping code. Orders from at least $500 will receive a free hat printed with RPM logo. The free-shipping offer has a quite decent checkout rate of 21.72%, thanks to the urgency effect. To prevent cart abandonment, they add a time limit of 10 minutes to the offer. The countdown clock running in real time creates a sense of urgency and pushes customers to check out right away to receive free shipping.
The one that works best is the social-sharing offer granted to orders worth from $50 to $400. Leaders RPM offer a 10% discount code if customers share their cart to Facebook or Twitter.
What it takes customers is a quick click to get 10% off, which is an awesome deal. But what it takes the brand to get social referral traffic from their customers’ networks is pretty small compared to Facebook Ads cost. A sweet win-win for both Leaders RPM and their customers, isn’t it? From March to September 2017, all 3 offers have gained more than 4000 views, generated 357 successful orders, and brought nearly $65,000 in extra sales to the brand. Extra tips:
Tailor incentive offers to different cart value ranges to maximize their ROI. In the case of Leaders RPM, a 10% discount may not be an attractive offer to orders below $50 because the absolute discount value is too small. However, a free shipping offer will appeal more, since customers are not willing to pay $20 for delivery of products worth just $35!
Personalize Email Marketing Automatically Buymac Australia, earned $42,500 extra sales from Mailbot app Buymac is a brand of PalaeoGraphics, a computers and accessories retailer since 1993. Though they are an Apple authorised reseller, they also provide a lot of devices from other brandnames like Bose or Wacom in their online store. While a majority of online stores have found email marketing very troublesome with low open rates, high unsubscribe rate, emails being marked as spam, etc., Buymac is enjoying quite sweet results from their email automation flow with Mailbot app. Their numbers are stunning: average click rate is 24%, click-though rate 3.64%, spam rate 0.0%, bounce rate 0.3%, and unsubscribe rate 1.5%. The most impressive campaign is cart
abandonment series that have an open rate of over 50%, and click-thought rate 15.2%, much higher than the eCommerce average. Buymac doesn’t send mass promotional emails to all customers. Instead, customer segments are carefully filtered to trigger the right campaign at the right time. For example, their cart abandonment series send 3 emails after 30 mins, 18 hours, and 3 days after customers leave site without completing order, and will stop sending if customers come back and finish the order. Win-back emails targeting customers who haven’t come back to store for 20 days also work well to bring old customers back to store. Automated personalization does not stop at filtering customers and sending campaigns. Product recommendations are unique for each customers, because they are picked based on individual behavior and interests on the store. In 3 months from July to September 2017, they got in total 56 orders via their newsletters, worth $42,500. Extra tips:
Personalize even the email subject to skyrocket the open rate. What Buymac does is put customer’s first name in the subject:
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Avoid 81 spam words in email marketing to make sure your emails don’t land into spambox!
Wrap Up These BigCommerce stores don’t hire big technician or marketing teams to launch these strategies. They instead use apps that are backed by artificial intelligence and machine learning to turn their marketing ideas into action. What about you? Will you save enormous amout of your time and efforts while making your eCommerce store another big success store? Simple changes and tactics can make huge impacts on the business performance. Start testing these tactics on your store with the help of supercharging apps, and prove to the world that you nail the next big thing.